Why Giclees Suck

[robschwager]

don't think my statements are contributing to this thread at all... but I'm trying to get my post count up.

HAH! Sooo awesome!

[robschwager]

Andy, is that "archaic rules" list around anywhere for me to see...? The demented part of my brain thinks "I love a challenge and I'd like to try to adhere to that".

Wooden semi-auto. Nuff said.

[ricv64]

Photographs as fine art were the giclee of their day to the fine art establishment.

Only when they were used to reproduce the popular salon paintings of their day . Before Photography , they hired like some English , Dutch or French version of AndyMac to bust out an engraving of a popular Salon Gran Machine . Van Gogh was a big collector and worked in that industry long before he tried his hand at painting . Some artists, Goya for example, decided screw those guys and busted out much cheaper and quicker to make etchings of paintings . Some weren't his paintings either . Still those were viewed as reinterpreted then as originals until much later

[Andymac]

Tamarind published a printmaking set of rules. do some googling - I think some of it was posted here.

Don't get splinters in your mesh Rob....

Good point ric, this has always bugged me when I get the 'fine art' lectures. Back in the day, any of the first 'printmaker artists' worked with other craftsmen/printers to produce work on what was considered to be the highest printing press technology of the day. But today's fine art printmaking is devoted to methods that through the years have stopped being the commercial way to do printing, as printing has advanced. woodblock, copperplate, lithography, letterpress, etc etc
So, is gickle printing the same deal? 50 or 100 years from now, when printing is done using X47 blastomesmerizer technology, will some old farts in a college somewhere be lecturing the students on how this old Epson relic they have patched together in the print lab is legitimate printmaking, wheras the X47 technology is just reproduction.

[crosshair]

That will never happen because after the robot apocalypse the world will be cleansed of all artists, legit and bullshit.

[B-DROID]

But who will make all the human resistance propaganda posters?

[julia green]

But those are reproductions. Not prints, designed as prints, separated as prints, conceived and produced as prints. Reproductions, of a painting. Which an artist sells to make $$ from a broader market than that which can afford a $10,000 painting. And that's fine as long as they are represented as reproductions, and not as something they are not.

And yeah giclee is a pretty convenient way to fart those out. But they are not original, the way a print made as a print from the ground up is original. And there is a qualitative difference there.

Nor are they limited, because unlike a situation where you'd have to prep and reprint 28 screens and still end up with something observably different than the original edition, there are no physical or economic barriers whatsoever to hitting Print and making ten more. Or one more. Limited doesn't just mean you print out 100 giclees and promise no more. It means that making more, would be a major undertaking even if you were so shitty as to do so.

FWIW I've seen screenprints that are indistinguishable from gickle in terms of resolution and color range. It can be done. But it takes skill, talent, and patience. Unlike printing gickles.

It also takes an assload of money to print like this if you reeeeaaally want to be extra "elite" and print screen print versus giclee.

Yes, Mark Ryden is a reproduction but let's use James Jean as an example where there is no "original" because the "original" is a computer file. I am 100% okay with limited edition archival prints of that work. I am actually fucking sick of people asking about the original. Well, sir, this IS the original because I only printed 1 of this artwork.

[ricv64]

How can a relatively new medium be called archival ? When paint finally was put into tubes they thought the colors would last but that hasn't always been the case . Whats up with these COA's too ?

[PedalPrinting]

'f*ck art lets fart'

- The Fartz

[farleypig]

this is a toughy for me. I often do pastels and they just rot in the closet - have been wanting to do one for the community of families with children from china. it would still be my work on a giclee. it would still be limited.
i am not a painter. not a designer, dont even consider myself a printer even though that is so far the only way i can get my work 'out there'. i think i am an illustrator and i do get sad when so much of my work gets lost in trying to stay around a 6 color print. to get across all i would want, would have to go to 4c process (i am not that smart) or do a 50+ color print (don't have that much time).
still, i find myself considering 'giclee' as cheating. maybe because i am old enough that i didn't grow up around computers. is my semi-auto 'cheating'? are getting films made at the blueline shop cheating?
all of this, i am not talking about gigposters - but 'art'.
or can a digital print really be considered art? does it just come down to the 'limited' run or the price?